Welcome to another edition of Hemispheres, where I’m so distracted by the thought of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 coming out this week that I can barely juggle the enormous mass of links for this post. Speaking of which, if you want my raw list of links, you can add my Hemispheres link feed (powered by Pinboard) to your RSS reader of choice.

While it’s not import or overseas news, for those of you who are celebrating Valentine’s Day today with a significant other of the nerdy persuasion, you might be interested in 4 color rebellion’s gaming Valentines. The Minecraft one from this year has a special place in my heart.

And now, without further ado, the news.

Now this is how you get me to play baseball games. Namco Bandai’s Pro Baseball Famista 2011, lated for the 3DS, features such players as Mitsurugi from the Soul Caliber series, some of the girls from Idolmaster, and even weird stuff like the drums from Taiko no Tatsujin and a jet from Ace Combat as baseball players!

Games you can probably play even with the language barrier: the Japanese PSN is getting ready to add a bunch of new fighting games – or, I guess, old fighting games, since these are PsOne games. But still – fighting is hot right now! You can pick up Star Gladiator, Cyberbots, and, most importantly, Darkstalkers 3 for about 600 yen – roughly $7 USD – apiece. An all-girls fighting game, Asuka 120% Excellent: Burning Fest. Excellent, also joins the lineup, so if that floats your boat… Meanwhile, here in the US, we got Pocket Fighter for $6.

Sharing news about Catherine is what I do. As such, here’s the newest trailer, which is probably the creepiest of the three (and if I recall, comes from the end of the demo – at least part of it does).

Catherine comes out this week in Japan, and if you need me I’ll be crying softly into my beer over its non-release in the US. Also, Catherine Twitter icons. /weep

If you’re interested in (relatively) cheap import titles, you’d do well to check out Play-Asia – they’re currently in the midst of their Lucky Lunar New Year Sale, which boasts more than 10,000 discounts, plus a chance to win big by finding the bunnies hopping loose all over the site!

What started as an adult visual novel game in 2007 is now a fighting game, apparently: Koihime Musou Arcade Edition, which retells the tales of the Three Kingdoms Era using, well, lots and lots of disproportionately attractive women. (And if you’re interested in the original, MangaGamer is currently translating it. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

About PhilU

Phil, better known as Stop from The Stoppable Force, has been blogging since 1999 and gaming for even longer than that. He is avidly polygamerous, splitting his time between a PC, PS3, PSP, and DSi, with a Dreamcast and an SNES hooked up and ready to go. (Resquiescat in pace, Xbox 360.) He is a fan of MMOs, JRPGs, action-adventure games, and is terrible at first-person shooters. Phil will talk your ear off about the Shin Megami Tensei series if you let him. Phil will be your friend on the PSN if you like – his PSN username is PhilCharisma.